Schofield continued to pace around the deck, deep in thought.
He thought about the divers from Wilkes who had disappeared down in the cavern, about the cavern itself and what was in it, about the French and their snatch-and-grab effort to seize whatever was down there, about erasing devices being fired from warships off the coast, about the possibility that one of his own men had killed Samurai, and about Sarah Hensleigh's smile. It was all too much.
His helmet intercom crackled to life. "Sir, Book here."
"Any luck?"
"Not a goddam thing, sir."
For the last quarter of an hour, Book, Snake, and Rebound had been trying to raise McMurdo Station on the unit's portable radio. They were doing it from just outside the main entrance to the station, as if being outside the structure might somehow help the signal get through.
"Interference?" Schofield asked.
"Mountains of it," Book said sadly.
Schofield thought for a moment. Then he said, "Book. Cancel that option and come back inside. I want you to go and find the scientists who are still here. I think they're in that common room on B-deck. See if you can find out if any of them are familiar with the radio system here."
"I copy that, sir."
Book's voice switched off and Schofield's intercom was silent again. Schofield stared at the pool of water at the base of the station and resumed his thoughts.
He thought about Samurai's death and who could have done it. At the moment, he trusted only two people: Montana and Sarah Hensleigh, since they had been with him when Samurai had been murdered. They were the only two people who Schofield knew for certain were not involved in Samurai's murder. As far as everybody else was concerned, they were all under suspicion.
Which was why Schofield had decided to keep Book, Snake, and Rebound all together. If one of them was the killer, he wouldn't be able to kill again with the other two around....
Suddenly a new thought hit Schofield and he keyed his mike again. "Book, you still out there?"
"Yes, sir."
"Book, while you're down on B-deck, I want you to ask those scientists something else," Schofield said. "I want you to ask if any of them knows anything about weather."
The radio room at Wilkes Ice Station is situated in the southeast corner of A-deck, directly across the shaft from the dining room. It houses the station's satellite telecommunications gear and short-range radio transmitters. Four radio consoles? each consisting of a microphone, a computer screen and keyboard, and some frequency dials?were in the room, two to each side.
Abby Sinclair was sitting at one of the radio consoles when Schofield entered the radio room.
The first thing Schofield noticed was that Abby Sinclair had not borne the recent events at Wilkes Ice Station at all well. Abby was a pretty woman in her late thirties, with long, frizzy brown hair and large brown eyes. Long vertical streaks of black mascara ran down from beneath both of her eyes. They reminded Schofield of the two scars that cut down across his own eyes?now hidden once again, behind his opaque silver glasses.
Next to Abby stood the three other Marines?Riley, Rebound, and Snake. Abby Sinclair was the only scientist in the room.
Schofield turned to Book. "Nobody knows anything about weather?"
"On the contrary," Book said. "You're in luck. Lieutenant Shane Schofield, I'd like you to meet Miss Abby Sinclair. Miss Sinclair is both the radio expert at this station and its resident meteorologist."
Abby Sinclair said, "Actually, I'm not the real radio expert. Carl Price was, but he... disappeared down in the cave before. I just help him out with the radio gear, so I guess I'm it now."
Schofield smiled reassuringly at her. "That's good enough for me, Miss Sinclair. Is it OK if I call you Abby?"
She nodded.
Schofield said, "All right. Abby, I have two problems, and I'm hoping that you can help me with both of them. I need to get in contact with my superiors at McMurdo as soon as possible. I need to tell them what's happened here so that they can send in the cavalry, if they haven't done so already. Now, we've been trying to raise McMurdo on our portable radio, but we can't get through. Question One: does the radio system here work?"
Abby smiled weakly. "It was working. I mean, before all this started. But then the solar flare kicked in and disrupted all our transmissions. In the end, though, that didn't matter because our antenna went down in the storm and we never got a chance to fix it."
"That's OK," Schofield said. "We can fix that."
Something else that she had said, however, troubled him. Schofield had been told about the "solar flare" phenomenon on his way to Wilkes, but he didn't know exactly what it was. All he knew was that it disrupted the electromagnetic spectrum and, in doing so, prevented any sort of radio communication.
"Tell me about solar flares," he said to Abby.
"There isn't really much to tell," Abby replied. "We don't really know that much about them. Solar flare is actually the term used to describe a brief high-temperature explosion on the surface of the sun, what most people would call a sunspot. When a sunspot occurs, it emits a huge amount of ultraviolet radiation. A huge amount. Like ordinary heat from the sun, this radiation travels through space toward the Earth. When it gets here, it contaminates our ionosphere, turning it into a thick blanket of electromagnetic mayhem. Satellites become useless because radio signals from the Earth can't penetrate the contaminated ionosphere. Similarly, signals coming from satellites down to the Earth can't get through the ionosphere either. Radio communication becomes impossible."
Abby suddenly looked about her. Her eyes fell on one of the computer screens next to her. "Actually, we have some weather-monitoring gear in here. If you'll just give me a minute, I might be able to show you what I mean."
"Sure," Schofield said as Abby switched on the computer next to her.
The computer hummed to life. Once it was up and running, Abby clicked through various screens until she came to the one she wanted. It was a satellite map of southeastern Antarctica, overlaid with multicolored patches. A barometric weather map. Like the ones on the evening news.
"This is a snapshot of the eastern Antarctic weather system for"?Abby looked at the date in the corner of the screen? "two days ago." She looked around at Schofield. "It was probably one of the last ones we got before the solar flare moved in and cut us off from the weather satellite."
She clicked her mouse. Another screen came up. "Oh, wait; here's another one. There it is," she said.
It filled half the screen.
An enormous yellow-white blob of atmospheric disturbance. It filled the entire left-hand side of the map, smothering nearly half of the pictured Antarctic coastline. In real terms, Schofield thought, the solar flare must have been absolutely enormous.
"And that is your solar flare, Lieutenant," Abby said. She turned to look at Schofield. "It must have moved eastward after this shot was taken and covered us, too."
Schofield stared at the yellow-white blob superimposed on the Antarctic coastline. There were slight discolorations in it, red and orange patches, even some black ones.
Abby said, "Since they usually explode in one section of the sun's surface, solar flares usually only affect defined areas. One station might have a total radio blackout while another, two hundred miles away, will have all of its systems working just fine."
Schofield stared at the screen. "How long do they last?"
Abby shrugged. "A day. Sometimes two. However long it takes for all the radiation to make the trip from the sun to the Earth. Depends on how large the original sunspot was."
"How long will this one last?"
Abby turned back to face her computer. She looked at the depiction of the solar flare on the screen, pursed her lips in thought.
"I don't know. It's a big one. I'd say about five days," she said.
A short silence followed as what she said sank in to everyone in the room.
"Five days," Rebound breathed from behind Schofield.
Schofield was frowning in thought. Abby: "You say it disrupts the ionosphere, right?"
"Right."
"And the ionosphere is ..."
"The layer of the Earth's atmosphere about 50 to 250 miles up," Abby said. "It's called the ionosphere because the air in it is filled with ionized molecules."
Schofield said, "OK. So, a solar flare explodes on the surface of the sun and the energy it emits travels down to Earth, where it disrupts the ionosphere, which turns into a shield through which radio signals can't pass, right?"
"Right."
Schofield looked at the screen again and stared at the black splotches on the yellow-white graphic representation of the solar flare. There was one larger black hole in the middle of the yellow-white blob that held his attention.
"Is it uniform?" he asked.
"Uniform?" Abby blinked, not comprehending.
"Is the shield uniform in its strength? Or does it have weak points, inconsistencies, breaks in the shield that could be penetrated by radio signals? Like these black spots here."
Abby said, "It would be possible to penetrate them, but it would be difficult. The break in the flare would have to be directly over this station."
"Uh-huh," Schofield said. "Is there any way that you could figure out when or if one of those breaks would be directly over us? Like, maybe, this one here."
Schofield pointed at the large black hole in the center of the yellow-white blob.
Abby studied the screen, evaluated the possibilities.
Finally, she said, "There might be a way. If I can bring up some previous images of the flare, I should be able to plot how fast it's traveling across the continent and in what direction. If I can do that, then I should be able to make a rough plot of its course."
"Just do what you can," Schofield said, "and call me if you find anything. I want to know when one of those breaks is going to pass over this station, so we can be ready to send a radio signal to McMurdo when it does."
"You'll have to fix the antenna outside?"
"I'm already on it," Schofield said. "You just find me a break in that flare. We'll get your antenna up again."
In Washington, Alison Cameron was also sitting in front of a computer.
She was in a small computer lab in the Post's offices. A microcrofilm viewing machine sat in the corner. Filing cabinets lined two of the four walls. Half a dozen computers filled the rest of the space in the small lab.
Alison found the screen she was looking for. The All-States Library Database.
There is a popular urban myth that the FBI has a tap on every library borrowing computer in the country and they use this facility to track down serial killers. The killer quotes Lowell at a homicide scene, so the FBI checks up on every library in the country to see who's been borrowing Lowell. Like all good urban myths, this is only a half-truth. There is a system (it is an updatable CD-ROM service) that cross-links every library computer in the country, telling the user where a certain book can be found. It doesn't list the names of every person who has borrowed that book. It just tells you where a particular book is located. You can search for a book in several ways: by the author, by the book's title, or even by any unusual keywords that appear in the text of a book. The All-States Library Database was one such service.
Alison stared at the screen in front of her. She tabbed down to the SEARCH BY KEYWORD button. She typed:
ANTARCTICA.
The computer whirred for about ten seconds, and the results of the search came up on the screen:
1,856,157 ENTRIES FOUND. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE A LIST?
Great. One million, eight hundred and fifty thousand books contained the word Antarctica in some way or another. That was no help.
Alison thought for a second. She'd need a narrower key word, something a lot more specific. She got an idea. It was a long shot, perhaps a little too specific. But she thought it was worth a try anyway. She typed:
LATITUDE -66.5° LONGITUDE 115° 20' 12"
The computer whirred as it searched. This time the search didn't take long at all. The results came up on the screen:
6 ENTRIES FOUND. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE A LIST?
"You bet your ass I'd like to see a list," Alison said. She hit the "Y" key for "Yes" and a new screen appeared. On it was a list of book titles and their locations.
ALL-STATES LIBRARY DATABASE
SEARCH BY KEYWORD
SEARCH STRING USED:LATITUDE -66.5°
LONGITUDE 115° 20' 12"
NO. OF ENTRIES FOUND: 6
TITLE
AUTHOR
LOCATION
YEAR
DOCTORAL THESIS
LLEWELLYN, D. K.
STAMFORD, CT
1998
DOCTORAL THESIS
AUSTIN, B.K.
STAMFORD, CT
1997
POSTDOCTORAL THESIS
HENSLEIGH, S. T.
USC, CA
1997
FELLOWSHIP GRANT RESEARCH PAPER
HENSLEIGH, B. M.
HARVARD, MA
1996
THE ICE CRUSADE: REFLECTIONS ON A YEAR SPENT IN ANTARCTICA
HENSLEIGH, B. M.
HARVARD, MA
1995 AVAIL: AML
PRELIMINARY SURVEY
WAITZKIN, C. M.
LIBCONG
1978
Alison stared at the list.
Every one of these entries, in some way or another, mentioned latitude minus 66.5 degrees and longitude 115 degrees, 20 minutes, and 12 seconds.
They were mainly university papers. None of the names meant anything to Alison: Llewellyn, Austin, and the two Hensleighs, S and B.
It looked like the latter Hensleigh?B. M. Hensleigh?had written a book on Antarctica. Alison looked at its location reference. It had been printed at Harvard University, but it was available at AML?all major libraries. Unlike all of the other entries?a collection of single-issue privately published theses?this Hensleigh guy's book was videly available. Alison decided she'd check it out.
There was, however, one other entry that caught her attention.
The last one.
PRELIMINARY SURVEYWAITZKIN, C. M.LIBCONG1978
Alison frowned at the final entry. She checked a quick reference list that was affixed to the side of the computer monitor. It was a list of all of the abbreviations used in the database. Alison found "LibCong."
"Aha," she said aloud.
LibCong stood for the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress was situated across the road from the Capitol Building, not far from Alison's office.
Alison looked at the final entry again. She wondered what a preliminary survey was. She looked at the date of the entry.
1978.
Well, whatever it was, it was over twenty years old, so it was worth checking out.
Alison smiled as she hit the button marked: PRINT SCREEN.
"All right! Hoist her up!" Book called.
Rebound and Snake pulled on the stabilizing cables, and Wilkes Ice Station's battered radio antenna?a long black pole thirty feet high, with a-blinking green beacon light at its tip?rose slowly into the air. The intermittent flash-flash of the green beacon light illuminated all of their faces.
"How long do you think it will take?" Schofield asked Book, yelling above the wind.
"It won't take us long to hoist it up; that's the easy part," Book replied. "The hard part will be reconnecting all the radio wiring. We've got the power going again, but there's still another fifteen or so radio wires to solder back together."
"Ballpark?"
"Thirty minutes."
"Get to it."
Shane Schofield trudged back down the entrance ramp of the station and headed inside. He had come back inside to check on two things: Abby Sinclair and Mother.
Abby met him on the A-deck catwalk. While Schofield and the others had been outside, she had been in the radio room looking at weather maps on the computer, trying to find a break in the solar flare.
&
nbsp; "Any luck?" Schofield asked.
"Depends on what you mean by luck," Abby said. "How soon did you want it?"
"Soon."
"Then I'm afraid it's not that good," she said. "By my calculations, a break in the solar flare will pass over this station in about sixty-five minutes."
"Sixty-five minutes," Schofield said. "How long will it last?"
Abby shrugged. 'Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. Long enough to get a signal through."
Schofield bit his lip as he took all of this in. He had been hoping to get a window in the solar flare a lot sooner than that. He desperately needed to get in contact with McMurdo Station to tell them about the French warship that was sailing off the coast of Antarctica aiming a battery of missiles at Wilkes Ice Station.
He asked, "Will there be any more breaks coming over the station?"
Abby smiled. "I thought you'd ask that, so I checked it out. There will be two more breaks in the flare after the first one, but there's a long wait for them. OK. The time is now 2:46 p.m. so the first window period won't be until 3:51 P.M., sixty-five minutes from now. The other two will be a lot later, at approximately 7:30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. tonight."
Schofield sighed. This wasn't good at all.
"Good work, Abby," he said. "Good work. Thank you. If you want something else to do, I was hoping you might like to man the radio room while my men fix your antenna outside. Just in case anything comes through."
Abby nodded. "I'd like that."
"Good," Schofield said. Abby wanted something to do, needed something to do. The events of the previous few hours had hit her hard, but once she had something to occupy her, she seemed to be OK.
Schofield smiled at her and headed for the rung-ladder.
Mother was sitting on the floor with her back up against the cold ice wall when Schofield entered the storeroom on E-deck. Her eyes were closed. She appeared to be sleeping.
"Hey there," she said, without opening her eyes.
Schofield smiled as he came over and crouched beside her. "How you feeling?" he asked.
Mother still didn't open her eyes. "Methadone's good."
Schofield looked down at what was left of Mother's left leg. Book had bandaged up the jagged protrusion at her knee quite well. The bandages, however, were soaked through with blood.
Ice Station ss-1 Page 19